Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 58 (Patreon)

"Cyra, can I have a moment of your time?" I asked.

Cyra looked at me with surprise, but then shrugged. She waved her warriors away and took me off to the side.

"What's the matter, Carter?"

I sucked in a breath. "We're supposed to be infiltrating the city, right?"

Cyra nodded.

"You and the other Amazons are going to stand out like a sore thumb."

Cyra grimaced. "I'm aware it won't be like the dungeon run. We'll have to get a bit creative entering the city. But the other teams are all on the smaller side, and Myrina shrank herself down recently."

"She did, but those two didn't." I waved a hand behind me in the direction of Elder Thalassa's two warriors.

Cyra went silent for a moment before sighing. "You're right. They're going to throw away any chance Myrina and the rest of you have of accomplishing her mission the moment they show their faces. I know Elder Thalassa isn't stupid; she probably intended for Myrina to fail right off the bat."

"She seems to have something against Myrina," I probed, hoping Cyra could illuminate some of the strange politics in the Samhain Clan I had yet to be privy to.

Unfortunately, Cyra only shrugged. "I suspect she has some political scheme in mind for Myrina. The only reason she didn’t have anything planned for me is because my mother needs an heir. Don't get me wrong, she plans on ruling for many centuries, but it's not wise to have a matriarch without a successor. It leaves the clan vulnerable to assassins.”

Cyra pinched the bridge of her nose between calloused fingers. “But you're right about those two following Myrina giving everything away. I won't let them interfere with the success of the mission, whether Elder Thalassa ordered them here or not."

"Besides,” I added, “with their levels, they'd help this mission much more by joining your team than by trailing behind Myrina and ruining our mission."

"Agreed." Cyra nodded.

With my prompting to set things in motion, Cyra marched over to confront the pair who’d been tailing Myrina. They started talking. Shortly thereafter, they started shouting. I wasn't sure whether or not she would succeed, but I recognized an opportunity to give them the slip when I saw one.

"Myrina, I think this is our time to go."

Myrina was staring at the city intently with a frown on her face and a look of concentration I rarely saw in her eyes.

"Myrina,” I asked, “are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Carter. It's just...” She sighed. “I've never really been in command before—not on a secret mission like this one. I need to put on my serious face," she said, staring ahead sternly.

Spinning on her heel, she turned to the mercenaries who lingered behind us, making occasional small talk with Sakura and Bridget. "Alright, you heard Carter… move out!"

We were gone before Elder Thalassa's people even knew we were missing. By the time they figured it out, we were well on our way along the main road into the city, approaching on foot. That meant we were close enough that anyone on the walls would see us running from two ferocious high-level Amazonian warriors and react accordingly.

Cyra must have convinced both of Elder Thalassa’s minions that they'd be able to protect Myrina better by making sure her distraction mission succeeded, because they didn't come chasing after us.

"Ah, free at last!" Myrina tapped my arm and smiled. "Thanks, Carter."

"Just doing my part, Captain." I grinned back at her and gave her a wink.

Myrina returned my wink. "Hmm. I think I like the sound of that… Captain Myrina."

We made it all the way to the city gates before we ran into our first obstacle. The line moved quickly and Myrina had a few silver coins in hand to pay the standard fare for a few traveling merchants carting goods from one city to the next. I only hoped we were able to slip through without trouble.

It wouldn't be shocking to see armed and armored guards, either, since traveling merchants walking through the wilderness still needed to fend off the occasional monster during these uncertain times with the Samhain Clan at war and unable to fully patrol the roads.

"Names, classes, and jobs," the man at the gates asked.

"Uh... here's the coin for the entrance fee!" Myrina held out a handful of silver.

The man glanced at the pocket full of coins in Myrina's hands, but didn't take them.

"Sorry, Miss, I’ll take that in a bit, but the paperwork is the important part. You can give me the entrance fee afterwards." The guard picked up his quill again and started scribbling.

Inwardly, I cursed. Names were easy enough, as were jobs—but Myrina's class was Amazonian Warchief. That was exactly the sort of thing that would raise suspicion.

We could lie, but odds were better than even that they had someone with the Examine skill nearby making sure we answered truthfully. Were we doomed to fail before we’d even entered the gates? I cursed inwardly, already planning for our escape.

"Names, classes, and jobs,” the guard reiterated, his quill poised over a scrap of parchment. “Hurry up, you're holding up the line,"

"Myrina, Carter, Bridget, Sakura, Lark, and Robin." Myrina gestured to us and then to her hired mercenaries behind us. "As for our jobs and classes... I'm a humble warrior and my job is lawyer."

I choked on my breath. What was Myrina doing?

The man scribbled the information down on his sheet of paper, staring at Myrina skeptically. He shot a questioning glance at another guard behind him, who waved his hand back and forth in an uncertain gesture.

"Wait right there a moment," he instructed Myrina, pointing off to the side.

Myrina stepped to the side while the rest of our companions introduced themselves one by one. Sakura and Bridget went through fine, as did the mercenaries, Lark and Robin. When he got to me, the guard’s eyebrows rose when I told him my class and job.

"Did you say your job was Artificer?" the man asked skeptically.

I nodded. "You heard right."

"Prove it," the man demanded. "If I have a mana circuit shaped like this, where would the power source go?"

The man flipped over the scrap of parchment he'd been writing on and quickly drew out a circle with a series of familiar lines on it. I'd seen similar depictions before while going over the system-provided blueprints and quickly pointed out the right answer.

"You would connect the power source here and here," I pointed out two points on the diagram.

The guard nodded in approval.  "I can't test you more thoroughly than that, but all seems to be in order. You can go on in."

"And my... uh... lawyer?" I asked.

"She can go in too." He waved us through. "The Samhains wouldn't have an Artificer under anything but lock and key."

"Thanks," I muttered, not sure how I felt about that.

I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask the man. Some were about my class and some about the Samhain Clan, but I was forced to bite my tongue on all of them. We headed in.

Once clear of the guards I lowered my voice and whispered to Myrina. "How'd you get away with lying like that? I know they Examined us. I felt it, and the guard using it was pretty high level."

Myrina smiled and winked. "Magic ring. It lowers the rarity of my class from Amazonian Warchief to just warrior—one of the common-grade classes it comes from."

"And lawyer?" I asked skeptically.

"That's my real job." Myrina shrugged.

"Lawyer? Really?"

"Yes, really!"

I shook my head in disbelief. From the looks on Bridget and Sakura's faces, they couldn't believe it either. We walked through Shadefall City, much as I had before with Cyra and Myrina on our dungeon run. Only this time, it all seemed muted and grayer.

At first, I thought it was all just in my head, but the more I examined our surroundings the more I realized it was true. The colorful walls and banners I'd seen all around us were worn through. I remembered there being a lot of stone buildings with tile roofs back then, and although there were still plenty of stone foundations, the majority of buildings were now made of rough-sawn wood with thatched roofs in the same style as Valkyrie's Watch.

A solid third of the cobblestones in the streets were missing. And those that remained had been repaired, with many of them being either misshapen or poorly placed. The neat and orderly streets I'd seen in the dungeon were no more. Here, little more than a general mob of people pushed in one direction or another.

"Is something wrong, Carter?" Bridget asked as she peered at me curiously.

"Nothing, I'm fine. Myrina, where do we go from here?" I asked.

Myrina pointed ahead. "Two more streets and then we’ll turn to the left. There will be a signpost on the right, just outside the workshop."

"Have you been here recently?" Sakura asked.

Myrina shook her head. "No. I memorized the map back in the castle. I figured it would help to know where our target was, and even better to know all the escape routes."

"You have a good head on your shoulders after all, Myrina," I said.

Myrina cocked her head back and narrowed her eyes at me. "What do you mean, ‘after all’?"

Fortunately we came across something familiar not long after and I was able to distract her. I pointed ahead of us. "Hey, Myrina, is that what I think it is?"

Myrina's eyes followed my finger, lighting upon a dilapidated corner shop. During our dungeon run, it had been a high-end clothing store—high-end enough to sell the bag of holding I still wore strapped to my pocket. Now, though, it was looking worse for wear. The fine glass windows had been replaced with wooden boards. It had to have happened long ago, though—long enough for those boards to turn gray with time and age.

"Yeah, I think it is!" A smile spread across Myrina's face, though she quickly squashed it. "Maybe we can check it out when the war is over. But right now we've got a job to do.” She nodded to a lane ahead to our left. “We turn left there, and then the workshop we're looking for will be just ahead.”

We turned left where she’d indicated and then continued on until we saw the signpost off to the right-hand side of the lane that Myrina mentioned. Sure enough, it was right where she’d said it would be. We gathered around it to regroup, surveying the workshop we were supposed to break into.

I looked up and down the street. It didn't look all that upscale—at least not compared to how I remembered how things had been. In fact, this whole part of the city looked rather rundown. This neighborhood had been converted from a shopping district into an industrial zone at some point. It still had the bones of inviting architecture that had once housed store fronts, but that was it. Now, it had the tired gray and grimy feel of a place people went to every day without enjoying it.

"So... how do we do this?" Myrina turned to me.

I stared at the workshop, then glanced up and down the street again. I made careful note of the smashed windows of nearby buildings.

"It's the latter half of the workday, but we can't exactly wait for nightfall because by then, the rest of the army will be here. I think the best we can do, is to break in and make a mess." I gave her a helpless shrug.

"Okay." Bridget's fingers tightened on the hilts of her daggers. "I just heard something behind us, near the gates. I think whatever Cyra is doing to distract the militia has started."

Myrina nodded. "Alright then, breaking and entering it is. Here, I brought something for everyone..."

Myrina pulled out a group of masks that closely resembled ski masks and each of us put them on.

As I put my mask on, I groaned inwardly. I'd come here to help Myrina. How had it come to this? I'd gone from supporting my old friend to conducting clandestine military operations with her.

What we were about to do wasn't something I was looking forward to. Had I known what helping Myrina's family would entail, I probably wouldn't be here with her now. I steeled my nerves far more than I had before my fight with Cromwell. My mother wouldn't be happy with how this would look.

Hopefully her soul was already far beyond the reach of the System and she couldn’t see what I was up to now.

"Let's get this over with..." I grumbled.

Off to either side of me, Bridget and Sakura looked a bit awkward. Myrina had grim determination etched on her face. For the mercenaries, Lark and Robin, this seemed to be business as usual.

In the distance, we heard shouts loud enough that even I could hear them with my low perception build. I flipped on Eldritch Augmentation to allow me to borrow the stats of a more physical class, and I could hear things more clearly. I heard shouts from Cyra, as well as a whole lot of militia. As I listened, they transitioned from shouting to fighting.

"That's our signal," Bridget confirmed. She'd been listening the whole time.

We approached the workshop, six awfully suspicious looking masked strangers. Stepping forward, Myrina kicked down the front door. As soon as she was through, she shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Everyone on the ground! This is a robbery!"


<Author's Note>
I have returned! I've been secluding myself for a bit to focus on finishing this book, and it's finally happened! I "finished".

Whether that finished book is any good remains to be seen though. I may still rewrite the ending. I also went way over my expected word count, so I may try to find an ending earlier and move the last 25% of the book to book 3.

I'll upload a provisional copy of the complete ebook to higher tiers in a bit soon as I finish a few more changes to the ending and some general typo / plot inconsistency fixes.

We'll see. Alright, break over. Now on to full-time editing!